Planning Our Garden

Today, I read a great article on Surburban Hobby Farmer about tools available for garden planning. I was so inspired by it, that I decided to try the free online tool they linked to from Gardeners Supply Company to design this year's garden.  Last year, I painstaking drew out the garden in Illustrator.  I must say, using this free online tool was much easier.  There were some disadvantages to using this tool.  For one, it didn't have every conceivable vegetable, only the most popular ones.  It also didn't have many fruits or flowers on the list either.  So for those missing fruits and veggies, I had to fill them in using Photoshop.  This is the garden plan that I created for inside our picket fence garden using the tool.  This year, we are doing only raised beds that are 4 by 8 feet, so what's nice about the tool is that it indicates how many plants of each vegetable you should plant in the square.  However, I'm a bit suspect about some of the larger plants.  The tool said you can put one summer squash per each square foot, which I don't think will give it much room at all.  Squash plants are pretty large, so I think one squash plant per every 4 square feet might be better, as indicated below.  I couldn't move the squash image to the middle of the 4 squares so I put it on the 2nd square.  I'm thinking of putting radishes in between the squash plants, since radishes grow so fast.
Some of the disadvantages of using this tool are the following.

1. This tool doesn't have the ability to label the images with text.  It would be nice if I could put labels on the images because some of the images look alike, for example the image for swiss chard looks like spinach.
2. It also doesn't show which vegetables are companion plants.  
3. Since they only show a selected list of vegetables, it would be great if they allow you to fill-in your own vegetable for the missing ones.

However,  it is a pretty cool free tool and I'll use it in the future.  The advantages of this tool are the following.

1. It is free.
2. It lets you save the garden designs you plan online.
3. It's an easy to use drag and drop user interface.  So it's pretty intuitive.
4. It provides planting tips for each selected vegetable.

Since this diagram is small, you can click on the image to bigify.  This is what is shown below.
Top Left: Cucumbers, broccoli, swiss chard, brussel sprouts
Top Right: Pole beans, cauliflower, lettuce, radishes, marigolds, canteloupe melon
2nd Row Left: Tomatos
2nd Row Right: Beets, carrots, leeks, celery, spinach, eggplant
3rd Row Left: Snow peas, snap peas, okra, peppers, scallions
3rd Row Right: Parsnips, onions, scallions, kale, mustard greens
Last Row Left: Strawberry
Last Row Right: Radish, summer squash

We also put in some raised beds outside of the picket fenced garden.  In one of the beds, we planted hard neck garlic.  The other bed, I think I want to do an herb garden.  Right now I have herbs growing in pots, but I think I want to devote a whole bed to it, especially after seeing the one that Corner Gardener Sue has.  Her herb garden is stunning! I have two more beds to put in behind the garlic and herb garden.  We are not sure what we are growing in here yet.  I'm open to ideas.   It doesn't get sun all day, in the late afternoon it's pretty shady.  What do you think we should grow in these beds?

There's still time to enter into the Urban Farmer herb kit giveaway. To enter, leave a comment here.

Gong Hay Fat Choy

Happy Chinese New Year!  This year marks the year of the Rabbit!  I was born in the year of the Rabbit, and they say it's supposed to be a prosperous year for us Rabbits.   Hopefully that translates into a prosperous garden bounty!  That would be fantastic.  Chinese New Year is the most celebrated holiday in China and among Chinese families throughout the world.  Traditionally, on New Year's Eve, most families celebrate with a festive dinner.  The hubs and I met my parents and my sister and her kids at our favorite Chinese restaurant near my parent's house, Noodle Chu Restaurant.  The meal was fantastic, among the dishes were stuffed fried tofu, Kung Pao chicken, beef with Chinese broccoli (gai-lan), curry beef, squid with sour mustard greens, and our usual favorites, sweet and sour pork chops and Chinese crispy chicken with prawn chips.  The food was divine!  Even though I am of Chinese descent, of all these dishes, I only know how to make 2 of them shown in this photo. Hahaha!  Terrible I know.  I should ask my dad to teach me, he's a professional Chinese Chef!

There are many traditions with Chinese New Year.  Traditional food, and traditional gifts.  After dinner, my parents gave us Red Envelopes that contains money.   It's tradition for adults or married couples to give Red Envelopes to kids or to juniors (single people who are younger than you).  The Red Envelopes signifies good luck, wealth and to keep the evil spirits away.  ;) Keeping up with tradition, I bought these pretty envelopes to give to my nieces and nephews.  I picked these envelopes because it had such pretty orchids on it.  Sometimes, I like to recycle the envelopes I receive and use them as seed packets.  Don't they make pretty seeds packets??  But, shhhh, don't tell my mom.  She would be mortified if she knew I used these to hold seeds!  You'll also notice two Mandarin oranges on the envelope as well, these represent Good Luck and fortune.  It's tradition to get Mandarin oranges, clementines or tangerines as gifts. 

My parents gave us 6 tangerines for good luck.  At dinner, the restaurant gave us a plateful of tangerines for dessert.  I ate an entire one by myself because it was so sweet and refreshing!

Yesterday, I went to the post office to get some stamps so that I could mail out some bills.  To my surprise, they had these great Mandarin orange stamps for Chinese New Year.  Aren't they so pretty?  Even if you don't celebrate the lunar new year, it's still nice to see some colorful fruit on an envelope!

Opening A Jar Of Summer

On this completely dreary day of snow, rain and sleet, I was craving a bit of summer. I opened a jar of peach jam that my mother-in-law made us. Oh boy did it hit the spot! It tastes so much like summer in a jar. I do hope our peach tree produces some significant size peaches this year so that we can make some homemade peach jam too. Delicious!

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Urban Farmer: Herb Garden Seed Kit Giveaway

In my previous post, I mentioned that I hit 300 blog posts.  Woo hoo!  To celebrate, Urban Farmer is sponsoring an Organic Herb Garden Seed Giveaway for one lucky reader.  I've mentioned Urban Farmer in previous posts and really admire their commitment to eco-friendly gardening and love their recycled seed packets.  In addition to eco-friendly packaging, they also stand behind their seed pledge.  They "pledge that we do not knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds or plants...Further, we wish to support agricultural progress that leads to healthier soils, to genetically diverse agricultural ecosystems, and ultimately to healthy people and communities."  I really support seed companies who are against GMO / GEO seeds.  

For your chance to win this organic herb kit from Urban Farmer, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post by 11:59pm PST, February 8th! I will select a random winner using random.org.  The herb kit contains organic seeds of Italian Basil, Italian Parsley, Chives, Oregano, Dill and Cilantro.  Click here for more info on this kit.  For additional entries, Tweet and Facebook about this post and leave an additional separate comment for each Twitter & Facebook post.  Thanks for reading and Good Luck!